Rick and Morty: An Irreverent Exercise In Harmon Brand Hilarity

As far as Adult Swim content goes, Dan Harmon's brilliantly conceived new show, Rick and Morty, easily ranks as one of the network's most ludicrous concepts, with equally strange yet competent execution to match. Outrageously funny and unapologetically crude, the show can best be described as an irreverent exercise in Harmon brand hilarity, pushing the envelope in the most surprising and inventive ways possible while still packing itself tight with enough zany antics to keep even the most skeptical viewers on their asses laughing. It's refreshingly absurd and ridiculously fun, its script popping with an almost giddy realization that it really can do whatever the hell it wants. And, as one would expect, it takes full advantage of that realization, reveling in its own weirdness as it moves at a leisurely, almost casual pace. Like the former of its titular characters, Rick and Morty couldn't care less about the wreckage it leaves lying strewn about in its wake. Fun is the primary objective here, and if you can relinquish your chokehold on reality for a mere thirty minutes you will have an absolute blast.

Morty's lived a fairly unspectacular life before his estranged grandfather, Rick Sanchez, belches his way back into the picture and starts living with his family. Not only does Rick immediately start using his oblivious grandson as his personal research monkey, he exposes him to a variety of perilous predicaments that often have hilarious, life-altering ramifications. Irresponsibility runs rampant as Rick drags Morty across dimensions, into intergalactic house parties, and all over reality, all in the name of science. At least that's what he tells himself.

If Community was Harmon's love letter to social rejects, Rick and Morty is his “Fuck it” letter to convention. It's difficult to slap labels on this show, because it constantly strives to stay outside the box and be something so completely insane that it manages to be endearing. It lacks the sympathy and poignancy that made Community such an unbelievable experience, instead taking an apathetic approach that actually works and capitalizes on his oddball humor.

On top of everything else it has going for it, Rick and Morty possesses an almost magnetic eccentricity can be accurately described as either unbelievably off-putting or absurdly entertaining. And, more often than not, it bounces back and forth between both. It's not hard to imagine Harmon and his co-creator, Justin Roiland, sitting around a cluttered table, bowls deep in a pot smoking session with storyboards strewn out before them as they take long, effective hits from a skillfully rolled joint and absent-mindedly discuss hilarious things they should subject their characters to.

It's an undeniably fun show, with unique structure (if you can even call it structure), surprisingly complex characters, and hilarious happenstances that elevate this already strange frolic through space and time to an absurd experiment with just how influential substance abuse can be in the screenwriting process.

Rick and Morty propels sci-fi to new levels of absurdity, injecting gut-busting humor, off-the-wall action, and copious amounts of animated violence into an already ludicrous concept from a ridiculously brilliant mind. There are no morals and there are no boundaries here. Only insanity and fun.